The St. Michael’s Hospital Community Research Co-Design Team was commissioned to find agreement on a topic for a major new community research project that St. Michael's Hospital could pursue. Between February and July 2018, twelve residents of the St. Michael's Hospital catchment area worked alongside four St. Michael's staff in the Department of Family and Community Medicine as members of the Community Research Co-Design Team.

After four afternoons of learning and deliberation, the Team ultimately recommended that St. Michael's undertake a major new research project to investigate the health effects of a community-led intervention that reduces social isolation.

This autumn,MASS staff will be giving a series of talks about democratic innovation and citizen participation in Europe. Principal Peter MacLeod will be in Paris, Strasbourg, London, Copenhagen, and Berlin, and Katelynn Northam will be in Madrid.

At MASS, we love a good process story and it’s hard to beat this surprising and neglected tale of an unusual three-year conference, staffed by hundreds of diplomats in Helsinki and Geneva. The resulting Helsinki Final Act — signed by international leaders at the biggest summit meeting in over a century — was greeted with both acclaim and derision, but ultimately set the stage for the end of the Cold War.

Morgan’s book is being called a ‘masterpiece’ and the ‘definitive account’ of this crucial period.

The Final Act is also instructive — first, as a guide to an era of statecraft that has gone decidedly out of fashion, and second, as an example of how democratic governments can turn geopolitical turmoil into opportunity. It offers powerful lessons for thinking about how to rebuild political legitimacy today.

Morgan and MacLeod will talk about this period as well as the strategies governments use to stake out and find common ground.

In preparation for Toronto’s upcoming municipal election, we’ve been working with the Toronto Public Library — the busiest urban library system in the world — to create Know Your Vote T.O., a new voter information and public learning website.

Libraries and democracy go hand in hand, since timely access to information and the healthy exchange of ideas are fundamental to robust democratic politics. That’s why the Toronto Public Library is expanding the ways through which it supports engaged citizenship in Toronto, with initiatives like Know Your Vote T.O.

On the site, Torontonians can find the City Councillor candidates running to represent their neighbourhood and hear the candidates’ views on how Toronto should tackle the big issues shaping our neighbourhoods and our city. There’s also a collection of learning materials on housing, transportation, taxes, city services, and the manner in which city government and City Council function.

Two years ago, MASS convened the Citizens’ Reference Panel on Pharmacare in Canada. Over the course of 5 days, 35 randomly selected Canadians met in Ottawa to consider whether there are better models that can improve access to prescription drugs. This representative group of Canadians heard from a range of experts, examined different options, and, together, developed a clear set of recommendations for Canada's health ministers and policy makers. You can find their final report here.

Following the Reference Panel, Panelist Jean-Pierre Ste-Onge and Panel Chair Peter MacLeod shared the panel’s findings with the House of Commons Standing Committee on Health. You can view a video of their presentation here.

Since 2016, the conversation on pharmacare has continued. The Advisory Council on the Implementation of National Pharmacare is now leading consultation on how to implement affordable pharmacare for Canadians. The consultation is open to all Canadians until September 28, and can be found here.

Read more about the findings of the Citizens’ Reference Panel on Pharmacare in Canada below:

The Gosbee Fellowship was established to develop new talent and perspectives for public policy leadership in Canada.

It is named after our late co-founder, George Gosbee. Ten years ago, George, who launched two Canadian investment banks, AltaCorp and Tristone Capital, took a chance on an unusual idea that was admittedly outside the orbit of his typical investments. He believed that involving more people in politics — and specifically in policy development — would help to strengthen the country he loved. To commemorate his legacy of public policy leadership in Canada, we renamed our internship program in his honour. Gosbee Fellows are people who we predict will make important and inclusive contributions to public policy in Canada, and through this program, we invest in their potential.

Each year, we select three Fellows who join our Toronto team for 12-16 weeks, full-time. Gosbee Fellows have the opportunity to work on a range of policy projects, acquiring new skills and sensibilities, while also having the opportunity to pursue professional interests with the support of the MASS team.

The Irish Citizens’ Assembly was established in 2016 to examine five issues and make recommendations to the Houses of the Oireachtas (the Legislature of Ireland) for further debate by elected representatives. The Assembly is made up of a chair and 99 randomly selected citizens who are broadly representative of the Irish electorate.

One of the five issues the Assembly was asked to examine was the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution which, passed in 1983, made abortion illegal in Ireland. After six months of deliberation on the Amendment, the Assembly recommended abortions should be provided in a range of circumstances.

An all-party parliamentary committee charged with considering the work of the citizens’ assembly subsequently recommended legal abortion without restriction up to 12 weeks of pregnancy. This would first require an amendment to the Constitution, which are only possible by way of referendum.

On May 25, 2018, Irish citizens voted to approve the removal of Article 40.3.3 from the Irish Constitution, which prohibits abortion in Ireland. This ‘Yes’ vote allows the Oireachtas to pass laws regulating the termination of pregnancy. Following the referendum, the Irish government will bring legislation before the Dáil (the lower house of the Oireachtas) which will allow abortion on request up to the 12th week of pregnancy.

Learn more about the Citizens’ Assembly and their role in the referendum below:

This January, MASS staff travelled to Madrid for the founding meeting of Democracy R&D, an international consortium of organizations working to make deliberative democracy part of our political systems. There, we met David Van Reybrouck, a remarkable cultural historian, archaeologist, and author.

David's timely and provocatively titled book, Against Elections, is being published in Canada this April. In this book, David argues democracy is about more than elections and that recovering a more expansive idea of what it means to live in a democracy is essential to pushing back against rising populist ideals.

As we head into what promises to be a fierce political super-cycle, with municipal, provincial and federal elections each on the horizon, we hope you’ll join us for this important discussion about our democratic past and future.

We're looking to expand our team, adding a new project director and project coordinator later this fall. Applicants should have a rare mix of qualities to help us build our practice and raise our game. MASS LBP is a private company with a public mission: to assist governments to connect with citizens in inventive and effective ways, as we work towards common ground on the defining political issues of our time.

In April, more than 120 researchers, policy-makers, public health officials, law enforcement professionals, drug users and community organizers met to examine the future of Canada’s domestic and international drug policies.

Sponsored by the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation, Canada's Drug Futures Forum brought together over 20 speakers, including Canada's Minister for Health Dr. Jane Philpott, to explore issues including international control and management; decriminalization, regulation and harm reduction; integrating policing and public health; and strategies for health and social equity. The two-day conference concluded with attendees drawing up and submitting a set of recommendations to improve Canadian drug policy.

Thirty-six residents of the City of Duncan and the Municipality of North Cowichan on Vancouver Island have been randomly selected to sit on the Citizens’ Assembly on Municipal Amalgamation. The elected councils of both municipalities commissioned the Assembly to learn about the needs and interests of local residents, examine the implications of creating a new, amalgamated municipal structure, and advise local councillors and their administrations on the conditions under which the municipalities should proceed.

The Assembly will meet six times between January and April 2017, and members of the Assembly will host a public meeting on February 2 to hear the views of their neighbours in the area.

On Jan 9, 2017, the Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care announced it will provide funding for supervised injection services (SIS) in Toronto. These services will offer a safe and hygienic environment for people to inject pre-obtained illicit drugs under the supervision of a nurse. SISs have been shown to be an effective way to reduce the harms that can arise from drug use, including deaths from overdose.

The SISs will be added to the existing clinical health and harm reduction services at three locations: The Works (a service of Toronto Public Health), Queen West - Central Toronto Community Health Centre, and South Riverdale Community Health Centre. As part of the process to offer SISs, these three agencies commissioned MASS to undertake a community consultation process in April 2016. We heard from hundreds of community members through a series of public meetings, open houses, focus groups, and an online survey.

Metro News reported on the Toronto Planning Review Panel, a group of Toronto residents brought together to provide recommendations to City staff on important planning issues. MASS was commissioned by the Toronto Planning Division to recruit and select the panelists, who are demographically and geographically representative of the city. MASS also ran an orientation and training session over four Saturdays, and has helped to organise and facilitate the panel’s bimonthly meetings.